


The Bleed

by irrelevant



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dead Robins, M/M, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:27:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come on, this is the Bruce who gave Jason Red Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bleed

**Author's Note:**

> I want their violent, paranoid, sociopathic version of happy like nothing else in this or any other universe.

It's not Earth as he knows it. It's not his Earth. But it is _an_ Earth, one with a Gotham and a living Robin who is not his Robin.

This of course means that there is also a Batman who isn't he. Or there was.

"Bruce."

Yet another Robin, or rather a Robin who used to be. This one is even less Bruce's Robin than the other—he's the Robin Bruce needed but wasn't allowed to keep. He's the Robin Bruce _wants_, a revenant, a gift this world's Bruce Wayne and Batman threw away.

Bruce can't comprehend his other's reasoning. He can't understand how any version of himself, no matter how deluded, could have without truly _having_, with all that having entails.

"Sorry," Jay says. "Probably should've taken you to my place."

Bruce lets the drape fall from his hand. It settles, half covering the window, feeding the darkness that lives in corners, under beds, within the shadowed angles of half-closed doors. "It's better that you told them," he says, and the sound Jay makes isn't really a laugh.

"Yeah, letting Dick find out—"

He knows what his own Dick's reaction would have been. This other's might not have been as extreme, but there are degrees of extremity. "Come here," he says, and Jason leaves the doorway and crosses the room like the obedient boy he never was.

He stands in front of Bruce with his arms loose at his sides and his head thrown back; he's defiant even when he's certain of approbation. He's broader everywhere than Bruce remembers, and it feels too greedy, too extravagant to be able to look at him and see the evidence of age and _aging_, feel it in the solid musculature giving under his hands gripping Jay's bare shoulders.

"Dick intends to offer me the suit. Soon, I think," he says, and gets another laugh that isn't.

"Poor Dickiebird. Poor, poor miserable little bastard. He'd do it right now, but he can't 'cause that would be disrespectful now, wouldn't it?"

Bruce feels his fingers dig into Jason's flesh; he forces them to relax, then to let go completely. "Disrespect is in the eye of the beholder. Don't turn it on your brother. He's done nothing to merit it."

The shadows surrounding Jason's mouth writhe. "Yeah, right," he snorts. "Because Dickie always treated me like the little bro he never had. Oh wait, that's because according to him, he didn't get one until darling Tim-may. Jesus, Bruce, your bastard is less of an asshole to me."

"Damian," who is unique to this universe, insofar as he is aware, "isn't mine. I'm not entirely certain he's a Wayne."

He steps away, intending to find a light switch and flip it, but Jason grabs his sleeve. Bruce lets himself be held in place.

"Gonna step up?" Jay says. His eyes are white-out lenses: no pupils, no mask.

Bruce thinks he may like the red domino and jeans better than the suit he designed. He says, "No," and doesn't qualify it, and Jason's hand tightens, pinching his skin.

"Fucking deserter."

"No." He squeezes Jason's wrist, just enough to make him let go. Jason jerks his wrist free and his upper lip lifts, curls, something feral at bay, but not, Bruce thinks, rabid. Not yet. Before Jason can snarl at him he says, "Dick isn't ready to accept what I have on offer. He may never be, and it's not my place to force him. Or Tim."

He sees the punch coming; this Jason still telegraphs his intentions if you know what it is you're seeing. Bruce knows and he sees and he has Jason on his back on the bed, his fingers on all the necessary pressure points, one knee planted a bare inch from Jason's scrotum.

Jason bucks against his hold and Bruce lets his knee _press_... "Mother_fucker_—" Predictable boy.

"On occasion," he says, and presses again, and Jay's whine is canine enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck.

"Fucking _kill_ you—_Christ_." Because Bruce just bit his nipple and now he's licking it, licking Jay, swathes of wet up his chest and chin to his mouth.

"Leave town," Jay moans into Bruce's mouth. "Could—we can—"

"Perhaps." He mouths it against Jay's throat, kisses the words onto his skin, "Or you can kill the Joker. Again."

Jason shudders, arches up into Bruce's hands and his mouth, into Bruce's weight as though it's something he needs, his burden to bear, gladly.

Bruce bites down and sucks, marking him. Spreads him open and touches him, leaving something of himself every place skin touches skin. Thin sensory layers of DNA to be sluiced off, gone in one showering.

The bruises are less transitory. Bruce leaves handfuls of them, purple-red bracelets circling Jason's wrists. Starbursts on hipbones, impatient smears across the straining spread of Jason's inner thighs.

This isn't Bruce's Earth; he's not its Batman. Dick will be. But Gotham, any Gotham, will still need Bruce Wayne whether or not he wears the cowl. It's taken Bruce a lifetime to learn that, and the boy beneath him, sweet and hot on his tongue, is further proof.

Jason shouts when he comes in Bruce's mouth. He tastes like salt, like heat and blood and Troia's tears.

She cried while she killed Ultraman. Her cheeks were still wet when they arrived on Apokolips.

"Gonna fuck me or stare at me?" Jason slurs. His thighs are an obscene splay. He's fucking himself slowly with two fingers.

Bruce says, "I try not to limit myself. Make yourself hard."

He watches Jason sweat and pant, listens to him curse him and the other Bruce and every Batman who might ever exist or ever have existed. Before Jason can come, he pulls Jason's fingers out. "I'm going to fuck you now."

He comes with Jason's shouts in his head and blood from Jason's bitten lip in his mouth. He falls asleep next to a dead man and wakes up in Gotham.

One thing, he thinks, is not like the others; which one, he's not sure, but he is a detective. Eventually he will know.


End file.
